If you use Dropbox, you can place symbolic links in your Dropbox folder. This is a great way to backup directories while maintaining the local file structure you desire. As a bonus, the green checkmarks won't display on items backed up in this manner, though they will show up on other computers.

To create a symbolic link, open Terminal, and cd into your Dropbox folder. Then run a command like this. This command would add a symbolic link for a folder called Test that is in your Documents folder:

ln -s ~/Documents/Test

Using symbolic links allows you to add items to your Dropbox folder yet leave them in their "correct" location. So you could, for example, put your entire Documents folder in your Dropbox folder - if you have enough space - yet leave it in its standard location in your home folder.

Also, if you want to back up, say, your Documents folder to Dropbox in this manner, the backup won't take up any extra physical space in the Dropbox folder on your Mac.

I like the new reminders app in 10.8, but I was disappointed to find that there is no way to create new reminders from outside the app (like, e.g., OmniFocus, which has a quick entry window that can be summoned with a keyboard shortcut). I created a service in Automator that allows such entry, albeit with limited functionality.

Create a new service in Automator and choose Service receives no input in any application at the top of the window. Next, in the Text library, choose Ask for Text and drag it to the right-hand part of the Automator window. Enter a prompt, such as "Enter a Reminder." Finally, from the Mail library, choose New Reminders Item and drag that below the Ask for Text item.

Save the service, and use the Services tab in the Keyboard preference pane of System Preferences to add a shortcut that will let you launch this from within any application.

This only allows you to set new reminders in a single list, with a single priority, and with no due date (unless you want everything due on the same day), but it's better than nothing. One more caveat: it's slightly unreliable, because some programs interfere with the Services menu or don't accept Services.

Apps that can access iCloud have a different Open dialog box than we've been used to seeing; the popup menu at the top that lets you navigate up the file path from your current location is missing.

Well, not missing, exactly, just hidden. When you are in the Open dialog, and choose On My Mac, you see the name of the application, then a dash, then the current folder. You can Command-click on the folder name to display a pop-up menu showing the full path for the current folder. There's no visual clue that this is present, but it works.

In Safari 6, when you type into the omnibar - what Apple calls the "address and search field" - the autocomplete menu that shows suggestions for what you typed may be very long. If you want to select your bookmarks or history with the keyboard, you have to press the down arrow many times to get to them.

You can skip sections by holding down the Command key while pressing the up- or down-arrow buttons. So if you've typed something in the address and search field, you can press Command-down arrow to skip past the search engine suggestions, and then use the arrow key alone to select the item you want.

Use a two-finger pinch on a trackpad to zoom the text in TextEdit documents. Pinch your fingers apart to zoom in, and pinch them together to zoom out.

[kirkmc adds: This works zooming in and out with TextEdit. I expected it to work in other apps, and it does in Preview. However, it only works zooming in with Safari; if you pinch together, you see the currently open tabs, as explained in this hint.]

We've had some hints about finding iCloud documents in the Finder. This hint shows where they are located, and how to navigate through the various local folders that contain them. Both a comment to that hint and an anonymous submission point out how to make a saved search for documents in the cloud.

Go to the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder. Type anything in the search field in your Finder window. Make sure that Mobile Documents is selected in the Search bar, not This Mac.

Next, click on the + icon, and choose Kind is Document. Go back to the search field and erase what you typed. Now all your iCloud documents will display.

Click on Save, and check Add to Sidebar to add this search to your Finder window sidebars.

Note: one submission said to type a period (.), and, while this starts the search, this may not find all your documents if extensions are not visible. So it's best to start a search, then choose Kind is Document and delete the search.

Note also that you may end up with documents here that you cannot view or edit. For example, I use the ToDo task manager, and its file shows up, but it is not a file that I can edit. Interestingly, I found three Pages documents, each a size of 0 bytes, that don't show up in Page's iCloud panel, so this may also be a way of cleaning out extraneous files from this folder.

With the advent of document storage on iCloud, Mac users are facing a new way of managing documents. As some hints here have shown, people still want "normal" access to their files in the Finder.

Using iCloud for document storage can be confusing. Personally, I want to be able to access files I've created or edited with one app in a different app, and iCloud prevents that. But what do you all think?

Vote in the latest poll, and feel free to leave comments about iCloud either here or on the poll page. Love it? Hate it? In between? Let us know.

Copy one of them, paste it at the below those three sections, and add your preferred font and size. Note that you can specify the weight with "-Light," "-Bold," etc. Save the file, relaunch Notes, and choose your new default font from Format > Font > Default Font.

If you use iCloud to store your documents, these files are also stored on your Mac, and therefore backed up by Time Machine, if you use the latter feature. (See this hint for more about where these files are stored on your Mac.)
If you want to look for an older version of a file, or a file you deleted, display the iCloud pane in any app that supports iCloud, then, from the Time Machine icon in the menu bar, choose Enter Time Machine. This will give you a Time Machine view of the iCloud pane for that application only, and you can find older versions or deleted files.